Ben Bishop[8] allowed 1 goal on 29 shots for the victory. I don't know about you, but one of my takeaways from today's game is that I'm more fired up about Ben Bishop than ever before. He beat one of the best 2-3 goaltenders in the league across the rink in Price. He did it after getting kneed in the back of the head in the last game and, frankly, he probably wouldn't have played today if Lindback had been available because of it. He responded physically when Brandon Prust speared him during a TV timeout in the Second Period. And, he managed to tune out a hostile Montreal crowd that was all over him after the Prust incident. And, the Lightning really, really needed to have this win to stop the 2 game skid they were on at a key moment of this season. If anyone had any questions about Bishop's physical or mental toughness, this game went a lot toward answering those. It's just one regular season game, but it tells me that when/if the Lightning reach the postseason it's an environment where Ben Bishop may very well thrive.

The Lightning clearly understood the importance of this game and they came to the rink with renewed purpose. J.P. Cote and Radko Gudas[11] helped set a physical tone early and the Lightning kept working hard for 60+ minutes to secure the 2 points and make sure a small losing streak didn't snowball into one of those disastrous 6 game losing streaks that can really wreck your season at this time of year. They dominated the game from a possession standpoint, they had more and better chances, and they stuck to the program even with Price playing extremely well for Montreal.

The victory in the game gives the Lightning 6 points halfway through this 10-game segment of the season, which is exactly where they want to be. They widened their gap on Montreal to 5 points with the Canadiens being the first Wild Card team and they widened their gap on 9th place, for the moment, to 11 points. Losing this game would've made the situation much more bleak on all of the above fronts. Now the Lightning will look to close out this road trip strong against Minnesota and then I strongly expect Stamkos-palooza to happen Thursday at home against the Toronto Maple Leafs, which would hopefully give Steven 2 games to get re-acclimated before he heads off to the Olympics.

Mark Barberio[12] had 1 shot and 2 blocked shots in 15:50. He had a pretty good game. He was assertive offensively and no big mistakes defensively. I'd be happy with a lot more nights like the game he had today. He's now just 4 games from graduation from prospect status on the website.

J.P. Cote had 5 penalty minutes and 1 hit in 6:24. Like I said, his hit on Gallagher on the opening shift of the game set the tone, and he kept it going with a decent effort in his fight against Prust. He didn't play a ton of minutes, but they were leadership minutes.

J.T. Brown[13] had a helper and was +1 with 2 shots and 3 hits in 13:41. He was the recipient of his helper after PK Subban tipped a centering feed from Nate Thompson into his own net, shorthanded. You make your own luck.

Nikita Kucherov[14] had 2 penalty minutes and 3 shots in 15:02. He played center between Killorn and Purcell with Valtteri Filppula[15] out of the lineup injured. He looked fantastic in the role in the First Period, setting up a slew of dangerous chances, but his play seemed to tail off a bit as the game wore on and Habs seemed to watch Kucherov a little closer.